Maslianico

It is the seventh smallest municipality in Italy and it has two border crossings, both towards the Swiss village of Vacallo: one low down, towards Pizzamiglio, and one high up, towards Roggiana. People have passed through here in both directions. At dawn on 20 March 1848 the Ticino colonel Antonio Arcioni arrived with nine Italian exiles to reinforce the men of Como, had a firefight with the Croats at Maslianico itself, went back to Chiasso to be treated and returned. In August Giuseppe Mazzini passed by, bound for exile, and left his carbine with the Ticino gendarmes. In January 1851 Luigi Dottesio was arrested here, whom Radetzky had hanged in Venice on the eleventh of October; a plaque marks the place of his capture. In February 1944 the anti-fascist Latinist Concetto Marchesi crossed out from here.

Three thousand three hundred and five inhabitants in the province of Como, on a stream, the Breggia, which with the Molinara channel first turned the grain mills and then the paper works. The border runs through sport as well: between 1914 and 1923 the Maslianico ground hosted the home matches of Chiasso, a Swiss club that then played in the Italian championship.